How to become an Independent learner?

Based in my expirience, I´m sure the contact with  language is too important for don´t lose all we have learned. If there´s not practice, there´s not way for sutain esential rules or aplications. Keep learning is important, because we can´t learn everything about the language if we just remain with lessons at class.

Another option is try to see movies or series, or read books in the original language.  Listening and reading in this way is a great tool to learn even more, or just improve all we already know. 

I used to translate songs  by myself, with my dictionary, and that helped to improve vocabulary. I think the use of translators is not too bad, just when it´s used in the correct way. When we want to know a single word, or a little aplication, I think is a good idea, but for formal aplications is important that we try by ourselves and if there´s a doubt, we can consult grammar rules.

Another way is thinking in english. Any situation is good to hear words or phrases that anyone says, think about how it could be  said in English and I repeat it in our mind. I know it´s useful ,because I´ve applied it not just in English, also with another languages.
As a last point, talking with someone who is familiarized with the idiom, is the best method, because we can practice with everyday situations, so speaking became natural.

Well, I wanna talk about my expirience with Baltimore Project in this semester. I´ve been at CELE for 3 semesters, and this is the firts time that I had the chance to practice in a useful way ll the things I´ve learn. I think the oportunity that we had is unique, because it helps to face a real situation about languaje, and face that is not too easy like in class.
I beleive that it would help alot students if this kind of activities were part of all the courses, because in all levels we have a lot of  new things  to learn, maybe in diferent ways. The technology give us that chance, so, why we shouldn´t use it? Having a contact with a native speaker, we have the chance to learn a real aplication of everything  that we learn, so we don´t saty static whith teory.
About the Speakup, I think it´s an interesting tool, because we have the chance to learn with topics that are part of our lifes, one way or another, so it´s easy to connect grammar with specific situations (in my case, I do that, and it works :]). In the other hand, have contact with differente  accents is great, because maybe we could get use just to american or to britihs, so the variation is good to "educate" our listening :)
I think is important to try different kind of learnig, so we can choose the most useful for us, so we can improve our learning, speaking, listening, writhing and, comprehension